The Lulav: Early Modern Polemical Ethnographies and the Art of Fencing

Ahuvia Goren

doi:10.3390/rel12070493

Abstract

In recent years, scholars have devoted a great deal of attention to the history of scholarship in general and, more specifically, to the emergence of critical historical and anthropological literature from and within ecclesiastical scholarship. However, few studies have discussed the Jewish figures who took part in this process. This paper analyzes the role played by historiographical and ethnographical writing in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Italian Jewish–Christian polemics. Tracing various Christian polemical ethnographical depictions of the Jewish rite of shaking the lulav (sacramental palm leaves used by Jews during the festival of Sukkot), it discusses the variety of ways in which Jewish scholars responded to these depictions or circumvented them. These responses reflect the Jewish scholars’ familiarity with prevailing contemporary scholarship and the key role of translation and cultural transfers in their own attempts to create parallel works. Furthermore, this paper presents new Jewish polemical manuscript material within the relevant contexts, examines Jewish attempts to compose polemical and apologetic ethnographies, and argues that Jewish engagement with critical scholarship began earlier than scholars of this period usually suggest

Highlights

A compilation of historical works by Jewish scholar Elijah Capsali includes the following story: At first, Maimonides was living in Cordova, working as the respected royal doctor
The king said, “What do you have in your hand? Why are you foolishly walking in public in a manner befitting the insane?” Maimonides became angry at the king’s scorn of his religion
French Benedictine monk Bernard de Montfaucon (1655–1741), who lived in Italy for some time and was an influential antiquarian, asserted that Sukkot was connected to an Athenian celebration of the goddess Demeter

Summary

Introduction

A compilation of historical works by Jewish scholar Elijah Capsali includes the following story: At first, Maimonides was living in Cordova, working as the respected royal doctor. Anthony Grafton and many other scholars have demonstrated how Renaissance humanism utilized newly discovered classic texts and philological methods to reach novel understandings of antiquity and its enduring influence on contemporaneous religions.4 This new historical awareness generated various scholarly attempts to delve deeper into religious history, employing detailed compilations of ancient sources to prove exegetical or polemical points and providing updated knowledge and even practical instructions for dealing with different human groups.. 1994), the current paper does not seek to provide a comprehensive review of this literature and its affinity to wider trends in early modern European scholarship Rather, it examines one example of Christian historical-ethnographical-based mockery of a Jewish rite—the shaking of the lulav—and presents four different Jewish literary responses to it. Jews began to engage with critical historical scholarship during the nineteenth century, the best-known example being the work of scholar Samuel David Luzzato (Shadal). Perhaps a closer look at the eighteenth century and its scholarly occupations will offer a more nuanced view of the novelty of his legacy, accompanied by a firmer contextualization of the Jewish Italian enlightenment in early modernity.

The Lulav

Early Modern Christian Mockery of the Lulav

Seventeenth-Century Jewish Responses

Striking Back

50 They place ash on their heads because of a Talmudic

Conclusions